Rogue FAQ! If you have short questions, post them here.

EDIT: This thread is not up-to-date for Starfall Prophecy. Some things have changed.

So, I've decided to put together a thread that addresses a lot of the more common questions about rogue class mechanics.

I'm also hoping that new players will post short questions here. And if anyone can think of a common question that I forgot to put on this list, feel free to let me know.

What type of weapons should I be using in my mainhand/offhand? Daggers? Swords? Axes?

It doesn't matter. Abilities scale off of normalized weapon damage, so the swing speed of a weapon doesn't affect anything. The only thing that matters is how much weapon DPS an item has.

(There's a single, very minor exception to this rule. If you're playing Nightblade in PvP, then using faster-swinging weapons will let you expend your stacks of Scourge of Darkness slightly faster, which increases your burst by a tiny amount. But the difference is so small that it's basically unnoticeable, so even then you don't really need to worry about it. And it doesn't matter in PvE, because you'll expend all of the stacks long before the cooldown is back up anyways.)

Does my offhand weapon affect anything, or is it just a stat stick?

It's just a stat stick for almost every soul. The exception is Bladedancer, which has two abilities that scale off of both mainhand and offhand damage: Binary Strike and Double Strike.

If you have two weapons with different amounts of Weapon DPS, put the stronger one in your mainhand.

What about my ranged weapon? Does that affect my melee damage? And do my melee weapons affect my ranged damage?

No, and no. (Aside from the passive stats on the item like Dexterity or Attack Power).

However, there are some melee souls that have ranged abilities that scale from melee weapon damage, like Nightblade's Twilight Force]. The rule of thumb is that if the ability is in a melee soul, it scales from melee weapon damage (usually mainhand damage, unless it's Bladedancer), and if it's in a ranged soul, it scales from ranged weapon damage.

For the sake of completeness, I'll note that Nightblade, Bladedancer, Assassin, and Riftstalker are considered to be melee souls, while all the rest are ranged.

Nightblade/Bard/Physician/etc have non-physical abilities. Does this mean that they scale with stats like Spell Power or Intelligence instead of Dexterity and Attack Power?

No. Every single rogue soul scales with "physical" stats: Dexterity/Attack Power/Physical Crit/Crit Power/Strength. (Yes, this means that Physical Crit affects non-physical attacks, and that Attack Power affects our healing abilities. The names of those stats are somewhat misleading.)

The spellcaster stats (Spell Power, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Spell Crit) do not affect any of your abilities in any way. You should never use any gear that has them.

What about trinkets, relics, and greater essences that say that they proc from physical attacks? Will my non-physical attacks proc those, or do they count as spells?

They count as physical attacks, and will proc anything that can proc from physical attacks. (With the exception of Tactician torrents, which cannot proc anything. See below for more information.)

That's intended. Torrents cannot proc anything-- they would be super-overpowered if they could, since they hit multiple times every second.

However, crits from torrents can still trigger certain talents such as Increased Fire Power.

What is the rogue energy regeneration rate?

Rogues regenerate 20 energy per second.

I see a lot of different talents and effects that increase my damage and/or healing. How do these stack?

There are five basic stacking groups: passive, buff-based, debuff-based, mastery-based, and encounter-specific. Each group is additive within itself and multiplicative with the other groups.

Passive boosts are anything that is always active (IE not granted by some kind of buff, not even a 1-hour buff). Examples include Blade Finesse and the soul gifts.

Buff-based boosts are anything that applies a buff to you. Examples include Stalker Phase and Hack and Slash.

Debuff-based boosts are anything that applies a debuff to the enemy, such as Magnify Pain.

Any damage modifier from masteries is in its own category, regardless of whether it's passive, a buff, or a debuff. These are multiplicative with everything.

Encounter-based boosts are something that is specific to a given boss fight. For instance, the Goloch raid encounter has white circles on the ground that drastically increase the damage of anyone standing in them, while Primordius has a phase where he takes amplified damage. Despite being buffs or debuffs, these are multiplicative with everything (they are designed in this way so that they affect all specs equally).

These rules also apply to effects that directly affect damage taken-- in other words, mitigation talents.

Note that these stacking rules only apply to effects that offer direct, percentage-based adjustments to damage, healing, or mitigation. If something affects a stat (IE Attack Power or Armor), then it will be additive-- for instance, Burning Rage and Increased Fire Power stack additively even though one is passive and the other is buff-based, because they're boosting Attack Power rather than directly affecting your damage.

A quick comment on the implications of this-- because DPS builds tend to have extremely high passive damage bonuses, this means that further passive boosts from talents are generally less powerful than they appear, while the rarity of debuff-based damage boosts means that talents like Magnify Pain are more appealing, as your debuff-based damage multiplier is likely to be small or nonexistent.

How do the weapon enchant procs like Electrified Munitions and Virulent Poison work with AoE abilities?

If you use an ability that hits multiple targets, it can proc on each target, but the proc chance is divided by the number of targets that the ability hits. For instance, Electrified Munitions ordinarily has a 100% proc chance. But if you use an ability that hits two targets, it will have a 50% chance to proc on each target.

I've heard that Crit Power has a cap. What is it? And do any of the other stats have caps?

Crit Power has both a softcap and a hardcap. Past the softcap, you get less benefit per point of Crit Power. The softcap is 40%, and the hardcap is at 50% crit power.

Physical Crit technically has a softcap, but it's so high that it's not attainable (if you're curious, it's at 45% crit chance). If you were to reach it, physical crit would start to grant only 1/3 effectiveness per point past the softcap. And this only applies to the Physical Crit stat, not to talents that directly increase your crit chance. There's also a hardcap at 60% crit chance from Physical Crit, but it's a moot point anyways, because you'll never even get close to the softcap, let alone the hardcap.

Dodge has a hardcap at 40%, which you will never get anywhere near. Block has both a softcap and a hardcap, but I no longer know what they are with the heightened level cap of Nightmare Tide, although they both seem to be out of reach for now. Like Physical Crit, these caps only apply to the actual stat, not to raw gains from talents like Quick Reflexes.

Guard has a softcap at 2369 (which is 10% mitigation), past which each point has 80% reduced effectiveness. There is a hardcap at 4737 Guard (which is 12% mitigation). In T2 raids, the stat scales differently, and you instead need 3380 Guard to hit the softcap of 10% and 3910 rating to hit the hardcap of 12%. T3 raids have yet another formula, with the 10% softcap at 4500, and the 12% hardcap at 5700.

Dexterity, Strength, Attack Power, and Endurance are not capped in any way. Armor and Resistance have diminishing returns but are not capped.

Hit has a cap... sort of. For any given tier of content, there will be a hardcap for it, but the cap varies for each tier-- IE you need 800 Hit to be capped for expert dungeons, and 1000 Hit for T1 raids. Hit requirements for any given tier of content are listed on the stat's tooltip.

Can someone make a somewhat more detailed post about that 'hybrid build' and it's up and downsides to the 'normal build'?

Just the spec numbers and pros and cons would be great.

This thread is more about overall class mechanics than it is about specific specs. I recommend taking that discussion to one of the Physician guides. (It's helpful to keep the discussion of a given soul within the guide for that soul so that when people go searching for information, they can find it in the place where it makes the most sense for it to be.)

Durango mentions it briefly in his Physician guide. Some parts of that are out of date by now, I think, but it's still a good starting point.

Thanks Muspel for the nice informations , can you add part where you explain the damege caculation system such as how weapon damege number added with other things to make one ability hits for certin amount , also clear explination of stat weights in rogues and what are the numbers 2:1 etc means ... i know thats too much to ask but i`v always wanted to know about so this thread seems like my answer

Thanks Muspel for the nice informations , can you add part where you explain the damege caculation system such as how weapon damege number added with other things to make one ability hits for certin amount

Note that AP DPS is 1/5th of your AP (it's the amount of weapon DPS that AP says that it adds when you mouse over it).

Originally Posted by Zetsuu

also clear explination of stat weights in rogues

It depends on the soul, and I haven't done the math to have accurate stat weights anyways. As a general rule of thumb, AP is more valuable than CP on a point-for-point basis, but CP gear tends to have more CP than AP gear has AP, which means that CP gear is better when you have raid buffs (those buffs increase your crit, which makes crit power more effective than it would be otherwise), so CP gear is usually the way to go.

The exception to this is Bladedancer, which always favors AP gear thanks to the combination of Duelist Pose, Fated Blades, Contra Tempo, and Quick Reflexes.

Bard also prefers AP, or at least it used to. I've heard some people that after the Bard buffs it now prefers CP, which doesn't make much sense to me since the changes shouldn't have impacted the AP scaling at all. Durango would probably be the person to ask about that, though, so take what I say about Bard with a grain of salt.

Originally Posted by Zetsuu

and what are the numbers 2:1 etc means

2:1 means "2 to 1". For instance, if someone were to say that SP and Spell Crit were 4:1, it would mean that 4 points of Spell Crit were equal in value to 1 point of SP.

IMO Bard only really favors CP if you are using the more dps biased build. If you are using the "traditional" build still go AP because if you are using that build you are also looking for healing performance and healing still scales much better off AP. The issue before was that the dps was so stupid low that going CP to boost dps made no sense as it compromised healing. Now you have to chose what kind of bard you want to be to an extent.

Last edited by Galibier; 05-18-2014 at 07:34 AM.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorius triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

You dont really need that much healing from Bard nowadays and recent buffs were directed in wrong (imo) place as it boost base abilities values instead of AP scaling thus CP capped Bard will deal ~20k dps with BIS gear and dps is what you may often lack for the T3 raids.

Does the 10% healing critical from Ravenous Instincts boost the crit healing of the raptors attack bloodied blow? Does it also boost the crit healing of Spirit of the Wilderness? And does it also boost the crit healing of Rejuvenate?

There are a few abilities in Assassin that say in their tooltips 'counts as a poison', paralyzing strike and the gap closer just off the top of my head. Do you have any idea what that means? Is it important to dps?

There are a few abilities in Assassin that say in their tooltips 'counts as a poison', paralyzing strike and the gap closer just off the top of my head. Do you have any idea what that means? Is it important to dps?

It means that they're affected by talents that affect poisons, such as Poison Potency.

Originally Posted by Nuadu

Does the 10% healing critical from Ravenous Instincts boost the crit healing of the raptors attack bloodied blow? Does it also boost the crit healing of Spirit of the Wilderness? And does it also boost the crit healing of Rejuvenate?

Cheers

It should, yes. I'm not sure if those heals can actually crit, though, because they matter so little that I never pay any attention to them.